The Defining Themes of Today’s Biennial Art

The article analyzes the defining themes and styles of the past four years in the international biennial circuit, based on a survey of 130 biennials. It identifies a core group of artists who appeared most frequently, including Ali Eyal, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Carolina Caycedo, Kapwani Kiwanga, and Tuan Andrew Nguyen, among others. Many of these artists are also featured in the upcoming 61st Venice Biennale curated by the late Koyo Kouoh. The piece categorizes their work under two broad themes: "Post-Colonial Post-Conceptualism," which involves poetic engagement with colonial history and artifacts, and "Families and Networks," where artists explore personal and political family histories.

Kader Attia announced as curator of the 7th Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Kader Attia has been announced as the curator of the 7th edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, scheduled for 2027–2028. The announcement was made by the Kochi Biennale Foundation via Instagram, with Attia selected by a committee chaired by Jitish Kallat and including Shilpa Gupta, Amrita Jhaveri, Pooja Sood, Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, Mariam Ram, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Attia, an artist, curator, and professor at HfbK-Hamburg, is known for his work exploring history, memory, repair, and colonial legacies across installation, sculpture, film, and archival research.

Fight Club Denounces the System From Within the System

Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou's first major institutional exhibition in Brazil, "Knockout!," has opened at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo's Pina Luz building. The show spans over 25 years of Tayou's career, featuring installations, sculptures, and paintings across seven rooms. Each room is themed around a historical international conference—including the Berlin Conference of 1884, Yalta, San Francisco, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Bandung, and a fictional Avignon conference—using these as political and historical axes to critique colonial power structures and global inequality.

A sturdy soldier in a sequin dress

"Eine kräftige Soldatin im Paillettenkleid"

Media reviews of the Venice Biennale's opening week offer contrasting takes on the German and US pavilions. Critics describe the German pavilion, curated by Sung Tieu and Henrike Naumann, as a dense, ironic East-West narrative that layers Nazi architecture with DDR prefab construction, creating what Jörg Häntzschel calls a "shockingly seamless symbiosis." The US pavilion, featuring sculptures by Alma Allen, is panned by Maximilíano Durón in ArtNews as politically timid and empty, lacking the clear colonial critiques of previous editions by Simone Leigh and Jeffrey Gibson.

"Consequences of being" at The FLAG Art Foundation by Daniel Belasco

Deborah Roberts presents her newest body of work in the exhibition "Consequences of being" at The FLAG Art Foundation, featuring eight canvases and nine mixed-media works on paper that blend collage, painting, and drawing. The works explore the postcolonial landscape of Europe and Africa, using fragmented imagery of Black children against stark-white backgrounds to address themes of colonialism, commerce, and identity. Key pieces include "Have a seat, this may take a while" (2025), which incorporates miniature sailing ships and a collaged tiara from Queen Elizabeth II, and "Hands in the air," which critiques racist packaging from a German ice cream company. The exhibition also includes a series of eight collages titled "Many thousands gone" and a sculptural edition, "Zuri," a ceramic bust with metallic glaze.

Turkish artist Nilbar Gures brings defiance to 61st Venice Biennale

Turkish artist Nilbar Güneş will represent Türkiye at the 61st Venice Biennale (May 9–November 22, 2026) with her exhibition "A Kiss on the Eyes" in the Arsenale's Türkiye Pavilion. Güneş, born in Istanbul in 1977 and educated at Marmara University, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and the University of Applied Arts, works across photography, film, painting, performance, and mixed media. Her practice draws on personal biography to address societal issues, and she has shown internationally at venues including Osmos in New York and Vortic Art in London.

BAMM launches a suite of exhibits April 24

The BANK Art Museum Moree (BAMM) is launching a suite of six new exhibitions on April 24, featuring works by artists Jo Norton, Penny Evans, Joan Ross, Melissa Spratt, Aaron Butt, and Pip Stalley. The shows, running until May 30, also include the Bleakley Collection, a group of First Nations objects curated by Robert Bleakley in the 1970s.